Md. housing chief suggests parents could deliberately poison children with

The top housing official in the Hogan administration has issued an apology for alleging that a mother could deliberately poison her child to obtain free housing, describing it as a reason to look at loosening Maryland’s lead-paint poisoning laws.

The lawmakers, all Democrats, sent a letter to Housing and Community Development Secretary Kenneth C. Holt calling his remarks “incredibly offensive and insensitive to the plight of mothers of children with lead poisoning”.

He later said that he had no evidence of anyone ever doing that but that developers had shared the anecdote with him and, according to the Sun, he thought it was sufficient reason to change lead-paint poisoning laws.

“We don’t know where that came from”, Rutherford told reporters.

Rutherford gave the closing speech at the annual summer conference for the Maryland Association of Counties on Saturday in place of Hogan, who recently completed his third round of chemotherapy for B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Advocates for lead paint victims said they were outraged by Holt’s comments on Friday.

Holt said he plans to deliver the bill to the governor as part of his agency’s legislative requests within the week.

“No, that’s ridiculous”, Rutherford said. He said his department is working with the Maryland Department of the Environment to draft legislation for the 2016 General Assembly session.

“Yes”, Rutherford said. “We have concerns about the way we received (the comments)”.

[Hogan announces commission to review “out-of-control regulations”].

The lieutenant governor also spoke of the state’s response to rioting in Baltimore in April after the death of Freddie Gray, who was injured in police custody. Its signatories include eight delegates from Baltimore city.